But mark this old gentleman’s description of his father’s collection of Chaucer’s MS.! Had ever a Bibliophile a more delightful commission than that one of William Thynne’s, empowering him to rout and to rummage amongst all the monasteries and libraries of England in search of the precious fragments? And had ever a Bibliophile a greater reward for his pleasant toils? “Fully furnished with a multitude of books, emongst which one coppye of some part of his works subscribed in various places ‘Examinatur Chaucer’!” Where is this invaluable MS. now? It is worth the tracing, if it be possible, even to its intermediate history. Was it one of those stolen from Francis Thynne’s house at Poplar by that bibliomaniacal burglar? or was it one of those which in a fit of generosity, worthy of those heroic times, he gave to Stephen Batemann, that most fortunate parson of Newington? Is this commission to be regarded as some slight proof that the spoliation of the monasteries was not carried on with the reckless Vandalism usually attributed to the reformers? We learn from this tract that William Thynne left no less than twenty-five copies of Chaucerian MS. to his son, doubtless but a small tything of the entire number extant, showing that there were men amongst the monks who could enjoy wit and humour even when directed against themselves, and that there must have been some considerable liberality if not laxness of rule amongst the orders of the day. It would, I fancy, be difficult to find amongst the monkeries of our own time (except possibly those belonging to that very cheery order the Capuchines) an abbot inclined to permit his monks to read, much less to copy, so heretical a work as the Canterbury Tales, however freely he winked at the introduction of French nouvellettes. But though some may have enjoyed Chaucer in all good faith, there were others who saw how trenchant were the blows he dealt against the churchmen of his time, and what deadly mischief to their pre-eminence lurked under his seeming _bonhommie_. Wolsey thought it worth his while to exert his influence against him so strongly as to oblige William Thynne to alter his plan of publication, though backed by the promised protection of Henry VIII. And the curious action of the Parliament noticed in the tract (p. 7) was doubtless owing to the same influence:[2] an assumption of the right of censure by the Parliament which seems to have gone near to deprive us of Chaucer altogether. The Parliament men were right in regarding the works of Chaucer as mere fables, but they forgot that fables have “morals,” and that these morals were directed to the decision of the great question of whether the “spiritual” or the “temporal” man was to rule the world, a question unhappily not quite settled even in our own time.